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As Predicted, the Iran Deal Has Begun to Wreck Global Nuclear Non-Proliferation Efforts By Fred Fleitz

Posted By on October 29th, 2015

Amid growing indications that Iran does not plan to comply with the July nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA), there is a new report that the huge U.S. concessions offered to Tehran to get this agreement are already undermining global efforts against nuclear proliferation.

One of the most significant of these concessions allows Iran to continue to enrich uranium even while the JCPOA is in effect. This contradicts years of U.N. Security Council resolutions calling on Iran to halt all uranium enrichment, and previous U.S. policies that have strongly discouraged nations from beginning peaceful uranium-enrichment programs due to the ease with which they can be used to produce weapons-grade nuclear fuel.

Although Obama-administration officials deny it, this concession has been interpreted by Iran and other nations as conceding to Iran the “right” to enrich uranium. Andrew McCarthy wrote in National Review in August that this denial is hard to take seriously, since John Kerry conceded Iran’s right to enrich in 2009, when he was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The chickens have already come home to roost on the uranium-enrichment concession: The United Arab Emirates (UAE), which in 2009 signed an agreement with the U.S. barring it from pursuing uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing, is now considering renouncing these commitments.

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Jeb Swings at Rubio, Misses, and Finds Himself on the Ropes By Tim Alberta —

Posted By on October 29th, 2015

Swing and a miss.

It was the story of the night, the story of the debate, and it might soon be the story of Jeb Bush’s campaign.

After months of flicking passively at Marco Rubio — all the while dismissing talk of their collision course, and rolling his eyes at the narrative of “master vs. apprentice” — Bush finally launched a public broadside against his friend and former protégé during the third GOP presidential debate Wednesday night.

His timing was logical and yet inopportune; CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla had been quizzing Rubio about his mounting number of missed Senate votes, which prompted a Florida newspaper to call for his resignation. Rubio responded forcefully by decrying the newspaper’s “double standard” of endorsing Democratic candidates who had similarly missed votes. The audience rallied behind Rubio, roaring with approval — and just then, Bush decided to jump in.

“Marco, when you signed up for this, this was a six-year term, and you should be showing up to work,” Bush lectured. “You can campaign [for president] or just resign and let someone else take the job. There are a lot of people living paycheck to paycheck in Florida as well. They are looking for a senator that will fight for them each and every day.”

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Rubio and Cruz Shine By Rich Lowry —

Posted By on October 29th, 2015

Rubio had the most consistently impressive night. He showed his political skill with the first couple of questions, which were hostile and had him playing defense, but he parried effectively and by the end he had made each one a positive for him. At every opportunity, he brings his answers back to his message of helping Americans struggling in this economy and to Hillary Clinton (he went out of his way to hit her on Benghazi). He knows his brief extremely well and almost always sounds authoritative and well-informed. You have to think after tonight more Republicans are going to realize his potential.

Cruz had the best moment of the night in his Newt Gingrich-style slam of the moderators that he carried off very effectively–perfectly timed and delivered. It will be repeated over and over online and on the radio in the next 48 hours. He faded a bit after that, but he was as fluid as always on everything else and I imagine pleased former Ron Paul voters in Iowa with his answer on the Fed. Tonight will provide more support for the rapidly congealing conventional wisdom that it will end up as a Rubio-Cruz race (caution: the conventional wisdom used to be that only Rubio, Bush or Walker could win the nomination).

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The Decline of Modern Germany By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on October 29th, 2015

Germany’s political stability and economic sway have until recently earned Chancellor Angela Merkel unprecedented global influence and power.

Postwar Germany has become the financial powerhouse of Europe and a model nation. Give credit to German hard work and competency for the country’s continuing economic miracle.

Less appreciated is how Germany also brilliantly exploited the lucrative in-house trade framework of the European Union market — along with nearly seven decades of subsidized defense from an American-led NATO.

The result is that Germany alone now determines the fiscal future of the nearly insolvent southern European Union nations on the Mediterranean.

Germany was also the self-appointed broker between Vladimir Putin and the apprehensive EU. Merkel supposedly has watered down Putin’s military ambitions by seducing Russia with lucrative German trade.

In addition, Germany positioned itself as the moral voice of Europe. In penance for an aggressive past that had nearly wrecked Europe on three occasions, it became the loudest critic of supposed U.S. imperialism.

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Peter O’Brien: Warmist Myths and Leg Ends

Posted By on October 29th, 2015

Those with snouts buried deepest in the climate trough are the engines whose faux science, gingered stats and withdrawn papers drive the alarmist publicity machine, but their mischief would be impotent without the support of the ill-read and ardently gullible
Many years ago, when I was a young shaver, Connie Francis had a very catchy hit – Stupid Cupid. I heard it again recently and it made me think of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW). It occurred to me that the cupidity of the climate science establishment, and its rent-seeking claque, coupled with the gullibility of the masses, has created a perfect ideological storm that no amount of common sense seems able to calm.

This is brought home to me most forcefully by a local denizen who infests the columns of our local Letters to the Editor page, regurgitating any and all alarmist claptrap he can glean from what must be an obsessive, 24/7 trawling of all the usual alarmists sources.

Still inspired by Connie Francis, my reverie ranged further afield until it conjured the mental image of a predominately normal Aussie bloke — someone like my local rag’s tireless correspondent, in fact — who one day notices a slight, dull ache in his left leg. He ignores it in the fond hope that it will go away. But it doesn’t. Eventually, our hapless hero, let’s call him Jerry, consults his GP who, after some tests, refers him to an oncologist, Dr Piltdown Mann.

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DHS, White House Tout Ability to Screen Syrian Refugees. But Under Oath, FBI Says Opposite By Patrick Poole

Posted By on October 29th, 2015

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson told USA Today yesterday that the wave of Syrian refugees that will be admitted into the U.S. in the coming year will be subjected to “extensive, thorough background checks.”

But just last week, testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, FBI Director James Comey said exactly the opposite.

When asked about criticisms made by Donald Trump about the administration’s immigration policies and about concerns that ISIS may embed themselves among Syrian refugees as a “Trojan horse,” Johnson replied:

Well, in terms of the level of effort of security review that we will apply and we have applied it will be and it is extensive. Both law enforcement and homeland security have improved the process from the days when we admitted a lot of Iraqi refugees.

We now do a better job of connecting the dots, consulting all the right databases and systems that we have available to us, and the refugee review process is probably one of the most if not the most extensive thorough background checks that someone seeking to enter this country goes through.

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What Ted Cruz Did in Wednesday’s Debate Was So Much More Than an Applause Line By Walter Hudson

Posted By on October 29th, 2015

In one moment, Senator Ted Cruz managed to do what no other candidate for the Republican nomination for president has done to this point: unite Republicans. He did so by pushing back against the ridiculously biased questions presented by CNBC moderators. The Hollywood Reporter transcribes:

“The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media,” said the U.S. senator from Texas, instantly earning applause.

“This is not a cage match,” he continued. “Look at the questions. ‘Donald Trump, are you a comic book villain;’ ‘Ben Carson, can you do math;’ ‘John Kasich, will you insult two people over here;’ ‘Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign?;’ ‘Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?’ How about talking about the substantive issues people care about?”

Cruz contrasted moderators’ treatment of Republicans with their treatment of Democrats:

…every fawning question from the media was, “Which of you is more handsome and wise? …”

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The Socialist Republic of Canada By David Solway

Posted By on October 29th, 2015

The results of the Canadian general election are now graven in stone and Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party has been given a decisive majority. Canadians have opted for change without stopping to consider that change is by no means an unalloyed good. The “hope and change” that Obama promised the American people has led the country into an abyss of debt, racial conflict, open-border chaos, destructive initiatives like global warming legislation, alliances with genocidal enemies, alienation of political friends, and a state of international weakness that would be risible were it not so devastating. America allowed itself to be seduced by a charismatic interloper with spotty credentials, a pro-Muslim bias, hard-left sympathies, and no accomplishments worth mentioning.

It appears that Canada has followed suit, electing an aureate nonentity whose CV would in any sane society have generated howls of laughter or stunned disbelief. “Spectacularly unqualified,” as a PJM commenter posted, Trudeau studied environmental geography at McGill University and engineering at the Université de Montréal—but failed to complete degrees in either discipline. Among his other triumphs, which apparently earned the confidence of the electorate, Trudeau was a snow board instructor, a camp counselor, a white water rafting instructor, and a substitute drama teacher. Even a farcical billet like community organizing would have been more impressive.

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North Korea and Syria Applaud, as Cuba Bullies America at the UN Posted Claudia Rosett

Posted By on October 29th, 2015

Never mind that since last December President Obama has been falling all over himself to please and appease Cuba’s Castro regime. He has failed to come up with arguments compelling enough to persuade Congress to lift the embargo on Cuba. So, while pocketing Obama’s concessions, Havana has been complaining to the United Nations General Assembly that the U.S. embargo is still in place. On Tuesday, the General Assembly continued its annual tradition of approving a resolution [1] slamming the U.S., urging the tailoring of U.S. law to UN interests, and demanding that the U.S. embargo be lifted. As usual, the resolution passed with near total support, the tally this year being 191 in favor, 2 against — the two holdouts being the U.S. itself, plus Israel (which, as a loyal ally, voted with the U.S.).

Lest anyone think this is some clearcut case in which the UN collective is right, and the U.S. is wrong, let’s be clear on what this vote is really about. It is not actually about Cuba per se, or the embargo. Cuba is a tyranny that routinely violates the principles of the UN charter, without incurring protest by the eminences of the UN. And Cuba has had abundant opportunity for years to trade with most of the world. The real constraint on its economy is Castroite communism, not the leaky barrier of the U.S. trade embargo. In this long-running saga, the Castro regime is not the victim. It is the villain.

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Turkey: Kurds Threatened Before Election by Uzay Bulut

Posted By on October 29th, 2015

The pro-government newspaper Sabah claimed that dragging dead bodies in the streets was “routine practice” around the world, a security measure to check if the body was booby-trapped.

“If we wanted to, we could round up all of them, kill them and say they committed suicide.” — Ismet Sezgin, former Minister of the Interior, 1993.

What Turkey is engaging in appears an attempt at historicide, just as al-Qaeda and ISIS have done in Bamiyan and Palmyra and throughout Iraq – and as the Palestinian Authority did last week with the help of a duplicitous UNESCO by labeling the Jewish holy sites of Rachel’s Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs Muslim sites.

How are Kurds supposed to trust such a government and its army when even their dead are exposed to attacks, torture and attempts at obliteration?

In Turkey’s election on June 7, the pro-Kurdish party came in third, evidently thwarting the plans of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to attaining the supermajority of 367 seats to be President-for-Life — or Sultan. In an apparent attempt to rectify this supposed miscarriage of the democratic process, Erdogan called for another, snap election on November 1, seemingly to try once again to get his permanent Sultanate.